FAITH AND REASON 347Necessity, belief-entailment, and contingency
Some of the things we know are true no matter what. If you add two things
and two things, you get four things; if you draw a circle then you draw a
figure; if you are six feet tall then you are not also not six feet tall. These
are necessary truths; they are true under any possible conditions and
cannot be false. Some of the things we know are not true, no matter what,
though they are true, given the way things are. There might not have been
any golden retrievers, and we might not have existed. There being no
golden retrievers and our not having existed are ways the world could have
been; there are possible conditions under which the world would have been
that way. So that there are golden retrievers and that we exist are non-
necessary truths; since speaking of non-necessary truths is an unlovely
way to talk, philosophers have instead spoken of such truths as contingent.^2
Among the contingent truths that we know, some have a particularly
secure status. I believe that I exist. This belief has the following feature: it
is logically impossible that I believe it and that it is false. In that respect,
my belief that I exist differs from my belief that there are golden
retrievers, that oak trees are not made of gold, that broccoli does not taste
like chocolate, and even from my belief that you exist. My beliefs that I am
conscious, that I can have conscious states, that I do have conscious states,
that I can have beliefs, and that I do have beliefs all have the feature that it
is logically impossible that I believe them and that those beliefs are false.
We will describe such beliefs as belief-entailed. For each of us, there is a
rather small set of beliefs that have this feature; we can call the contingent
truths that we know by virtue of having these beliefs belief-entailed
contingent truths.^3 false. Our comprehending acceptance of necessary
truths and of beliefHaving such beliefs precludes having them if they are
entailed contingent truths, let us say, constitutes unbreakable knowledge,
and our comprehending belief that such propositions are true unbreakable
beliefs. Other contingent truths – the vast majority – are corrigible truths;
they could be believed true even if they were false. Among the things we
know, then, are necessary truths, belief-entailed contingent truths, and
contingent truths that are not belief-entailed.
Religious believers would like their religious beliefs to be unbreakable.
This is not logically possible. Only logically necessary truths and
beliefentailed propositions are candidates for being unbreakably believed.
This is why they cannot be self-authenticated. Religious beliefs are part of
that large set of beliefs that are not unbreakable because they are not
beliefs that something logically necessary or belief-entailed is true. What is
neither a necessary truth nor a belief-entailed proposition is necessarily
neither a necessary truth nor a belief-entailed proposition. So religious